Tag Archives: DOC Trips

DOC Trips

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General Information:
Title: DOC Trips
Form of Folklore: Customary, outdoors trip
Language: English
Place of Origin: Hanover, NH, United States
Informant: G.M.
Date Collected: October 29th, 2021

Informant Data: 
G.M. is a 22-year-old member of the Dartmouth class of 2022. He is a history major with a focus on global economic history, and a member of a fraternity on campus. He grew up in New York City and enjoys being able to enjoy the nature of New Hampshire. In his spare time he enjoys hiking, snowboarding, and swimming in natural waters. 

Contextual Data:
– Social Context: The first thing G.M. experienced at Dartmouth was the Dartmouth Outing Club (DOC) First-Year Trips Program. The Trips program is organized and run by upperclassmen students through the DOC, and takes place prior to students moving into their dormitories and attending ‘Orientation Week’. The program is a collection of organized seven-day trips, and is aimed at giving students a brief introduction to some other freshmen and upperclassmen, and to give students a taste of Dartmouth before formally moving in and starting the orientation program. Groups of five to eight incoming students are paired with two upperclassmen, and each group is assigned an activity to do over the course of three to four days, ranging from hiking to canoeing to farming to arts and crafts. G.M. participated in the ‘Hiking 4 Trip’, a hiking trip for students with prior hiking experience. Students are randomly assigned their upperclassmen leaders and fellow group of freshmen (their ‘trippees’), and because students are arriving from all over the country (and the world) the students are exposed to people from varying backgrounds and interests. At the time of collection, George is a senior reflecting back on his freshman year experience. 
– Cultural Context: Participating in the DOC Trips program is an important experience for most students, particularly because roughly 90% of the freshmen participate every year. It is a common experience the incoming freshmen share, and it serves as a commonality among all students to discuss during the first weeks at Dartmouth. It is also an important tradition as it introduces students to the DOC, a very large organization on campus that oversees a lot of smaller sub clubs. One of Dartmouth’s unique selling points is the opportunity to use the surrounding outdoors, and the DOC offers students of all experience levels the opportunity to engage in all sorts of outdoors activities in New Hampshire, Vermont, and beyond. Because Dartmouth markets itself as an outdoors-oriented school, the widespread participation in DOC Trips cements Dartmouth’s image as a place where you can enjoy and learn to enjoy nature. 

Item: 
During the weeks before the freshman orientation program, Dartmouth’s freshmen participate in the DOC Trips. The freshmen arrive on campus and meet outside Robinson Hall (DOC headquarters) where they are greeted by upperclassmen dressed in colorful and flamboyant outfits. They meet their upperclassmen leaders and their trippees, and spend the first night preparing for their trip. Early the next morning they embark on their activity, and for the next three days they only interact with the members of their group. G.M. and his trippees spent four days hiking mountains in New Hampshire. The last night, all the various trips groups unite at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge, regardless of what activities they have been doing over the past few days, and they all participate in songs and dance before returning to campus the next day. 

Associated File:

G.M. and his ‘trippees’ at the summit of Mt Moosilauke during their Hiking 4 trip

Transcript: 
Collector: “What do you remember most about DOC Trips?” 

Informant: “We got lost on our hike and didn’t end up making it to our campsite on time. It was pouring rain and we just had to put tarps up on the trail and the whole thing was miserable. But, you know, good friends are made in misery. I knew that the people on my trip weren’t going to be my close friends, but it felt really nice having people to text during the first few weeks when I had no one to hang out with. Eventhough you are randomly assigned your trippees and it can put you in an awkward ill-fitting social circle, it puts you in a social circle nonetheless.” 

Collector Comment:
I had the flu during my assigned trip, so I was unable to participate in the trips program. However, I can understand G.M.’s sentiment that while your trips-friends might not become your best friends, you have met people and spent enjoyable time with them nonetheless. 

Collected By:
Una Westvold
Oslo, Norway
Hanover, NH
Dartmouth College
RUSS 013
Fall 2021

Dancing

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General Information

Informant: LH

Place: Dartmouth College

Date: October 13th, 2021

Form of folklore: Customary, dance

Title: Dances at Dartmouth

Collector: Maria Angelino

Informant Data

The informant is a Dartmouth student in the class of 2025. She wishes to remain anonymous.

Contextual Data

Cultural Data: The “The Salty Dog Rag”, among many others, are dance routines taught to freshmen during their First-Year DOC trips. Upperclassman trip leaders and H-Croo leaders tell the freshman they must learn and memorize the dance for future purposes. They often learn it upon first arriving at Dartmouth and on the last day of trips at Moosilauke Lodge. The freshmen barely know each other, but the dances are intended to bypass the awkwardness and help them embrace the unusual customs that Dartmouth students love. 

Social Data: The folklore was collected 2 months after the informant went on their first-year trips. She was interviewed and asked about her experience. 

Transcript: 

Collector: “How did DOC trips make you feel as a freshman coming into a new environment?”

Informant: “The trip was super important to making me feel more at home. I remember we learned the “Salty Dog Rag” and the one where you are singing in the shower, and there was other fun ones too. It felt very inclusive because nobody knew what they were doing so we were all doing it together. It was a lot of fun trying to come up with how to actually do the dances. I think everyone was super uncomfortable learning the dances, but it really brought us together as a community.”

Collector Comments:

The customary lore of dancing can be very impactful to a culture. In this case, the upperclassmen used dancing as a way to make the freshman feel more connected to the Dartmouth traditions and collective history that the college has. 

Pranks

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General Information

Informant: SW

Place: Dartmouth College

Date: October 12th, 2021

Form of folklore: Customary, ritual

Title: Pranks on Trips

Collector: Maria Angelino

Informant Data

The informant is a Dartmouth student in the class of 2022. She was born in Florida and is majoring in Women’s Genders Studies with a minor in Sociology. She works with the athletics department in management and social media skills, and is also affiliated with a sorority on campus.

Contextual Data

Contextual Data: In the week prior to Freshman Orientation week, the Dartmouth Outing Club organizes and oversees “Freshman Year Trips”, where students go on a 3 day trip with six to eight other freshman and two upperclassmen trip leaders. There is a wide range of activities- from hiking, to canoeing, to arts and crafts. Upon arrival, the freshman go to Robinson Hall (Robo) where they are greeted by upperclassmen dressed in random, flamboyant outfits (flair) to check in. They spend the first night preparing for the trip and then are sent into the wilderness of New Hampshire. Throughout this whole period, the freshmen do not have access to their phone and have all their belongings in one bag. This is often an intimidating experience for freshmen entering a totally new environment, but is intended to make them feel welcomed and comfortable. 

Social Data: This item was collected through a face to face interview of the informant. It had been 4 years since the occurrence of the folklore, but she says she still remembers it vividly. 

Item

Pranks are pulled throughout the duration of the trip by the trip leaders to keep their “tripees” on their toes and provide comedic relief. One of these pranks is informing the freshman that they are on a landing strip and an airplane needs to land immediately, requiring them to move quickly to avoid being hit by the plane. 

Transcript: 

Collector: “What do you remember most about trips?”

Informant: “The pranks were definitely the most memorable. They pranked us with an emergency plane landing. They told us we were on an emergency landing strip and some plane needed to come in right away. We had just been pranked with the “Robert Frost Ashes” so we didn’t really believe it, but then we saw it coming and it looked really realistic. In reality, it was just people with flashlights on top of a truck and they were coming down a hill. They brought us brownies afterwards, we were definitely fooled though. The trip leaders were super enthusiastic about everything we did, even if the pranks seemed far fetched. It was reassuring to have upperclassmen seem so excited about being with us in the middle of the woods.” 

Collector’s Comment:

The tradition of Freshman year trips sets the foundation for freshman as they enter into an entire new environment. This simulated rites of passage by physically separating the freshman from their parents upon arriving to Dartmouth, transitioning into independence through the trip itself, and being incorporated into the college community when they get back to campus and classes start. Having upperclassmen lead the freshmen on the trips is a form of guidance and expertise that make the freshman feel more comfortable. 

Mafia

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Title: Mafia

General Information about Item:

  • Customary folklore: games
  • Language: English
  • Country: USA

Informant Data:

  • The informant is a Dartmouth ’18 female. She is active in the Native American Community on campus, SPCSA, and Sigma Delta. She is a Government and Native American Studies modified with Anthropology double major from Martha’s Vineyard. She went on cabin camping in September 2014, but never led a trip or was on a croo.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: students will frequently play games while on trips to pass the time. By playing common games from almost everyone’s childhood, tripees have already established common ground. It also provides a little-pressure platform for interacting with each other without having to share a ton of personal information. Hopefully activities like Mafia lay the foundation for students to get to know each other on a deeper level later on as it creates a feeling of familiarity and comfort with each other.
  • Cultural Context: Mafia is a group game commonly played among US children in childhood. It allows for participants to practice reading each other by requiring participants to guess who is lying. It also perpetuates American ideals of majority rules (sometimes regardless of the truth) by having participants vote to determine guilt. It also causes players to consider their place within the group of players and their individual goal to be the last one standing. Finally it encourages creativity on the part of the storyteller.

Item:

  • Mafia is played as a group. One participant is the omniscient storyteller who directs the game rather than playing as a part of the group. He or she assigns a few group members to be mafia, a few to be policemen, and one/two to be the doctor. Everyone else is a townsperson. During a round, the storyteller will have the town go to sleep (close their eyes) and then ask the mafia to choose who to kill. Then mafia close their eyes and the doctor may pick someone to save. Then the police identify people who they think are mafia members. Finally everyone wakes up and guesses who they think are mafia and vote someone out of the game. Whoever is killed and not saved or voted out of the game is allowed to keep their eyes open for subsequent rounds but cannot speak or vote. The storyteller then tells a story about who got killed, who the doctor saved, and who was persecuted. The game repeats until the mafia has killed everyone or all the mafia have been taken out of the game.

Transcript of Informant Interview:

We played a lot mafia. We actually played so much mafia, because our cabin was pitch black during the daytime too, so if you wanted to take a nap (which we also did the whole time), it was pitch black so we’d play mafia. I was the best at it. It was a fun thing—we wouldn’t have had much to talk about if we didn’t play mafia constantly and come up with ridiculous stories.

Informant’s Comments:

  • The informant says mafia was a game that everyone knew how to play and was good for the no-electricity conditions of their cabin. She also mentioned that many aspects of trips were like a return to childhood.

Collector’s Comments:

  • The common ground provided by playing a popular childhood game that almost everyone is familiar with seems to allow students to get to know each other without having to really get to know each other. There is also an interesting parallel between engaging in childhood games to get to know each other and students’ own position as newly entering college and not knowing their peers. It makes sense that people would revert to the same techniques used in childhood to get to know others, because for most of them it is likely the first time since childhood that they didn’t know so many of the people that they would be in a community with for the next few years.

Collector’s Name: Clara Silvanic

Tags/Keywords:

  • DOC trips, childhood games, mafia game, cabin camping

 

Trips Food (general)

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Title: Trips Food

General Information about Item:

  • Material folklore: food
  • Language: English
  • Country: USA

Informant Data:

  • The informant is a Dartmouth ’18 female. She is active in the Native American Community on campus, SPCSA, and Sigma Delta. She is a Government and Native American Studies modified with Anthropology double major from Martha’s Vineyard. She went on cabin camping in September 2014, but never led a trip or was on a croo.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: Students are first introduced to trips food in the information given to them prior to trips. Students are supposed to disclose dietary requirements and the trips food is typically focused on being healthy, environmentally friendly, and portable. Students are then introduced to trips food when packing the food for their specific trip on the first day of trips when they are on campus. Throughout the course of their trip they will prepare their own food. Croo members prepare food while students are on campus and at the Lodge.
  • Cultural Context: Many of the food items on trips are not typical of your average American grocery store. Many of the foods are more organic and less big-brand than most students might be used to. These sorts of foods are easily available at the grocery store in Hanover, the Coop, which is a health foods store. Trips food serves as another aspect of the common trips experience for students as does their part in preparing meals while on trips.

Item:

  • Trips food includes Cabot cheese, Annie’s Mac, bread, Peanut/Sun-butter, crack (a sugary granola-like trail mix), organic granola bars

Transcript of Informant Interview:

Then once you have broken the ice, but not actually broken the ice because I don’t know if you can break the ice through awkward games like that, then I think they assigned you a specific time to go get snacks. You make the food bags and stuff so you’re part of the preparation I guess in that sense.

And then we’re at the cabin. The first thing we do is spread out all of our snacks and make lunch. We’re all thinking what is this food. Its super New England, like organic stuff. And there are kids coming from all over wondering where the normal people food is.

Informant’s Comments:

  • The informant saw trips food as another introduction into Dartmouth’s crunchy reputation.

Collector’s Comments:

  • I thought it was interesting that the informant didn’t just talk about the New-England-ness or oganic-ness of the food, but that she also saw the practice of having students make food bags for their trip as involvement in preparation and a sort of ownership over their trips experience.

Collector’s Name: Clara Silvanic

Tags/Keywords:

  • Trips food, snacks, DOC trips

Trip Leader Prank: Roasting Jellybeans

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Title: Trip Leader Prank—Roasting Jellybeans

General Information about Item:

  • Customary folklore: practical joke/trick
  • Language: English
  • Country: USA

Informant Data:

  • The informant is a Dartmouth ’18 female. She is active in the Native American Community on campus, SPCSA, and Sigma Delta. She is a Government and Native American Studies modified with Anthropology double major from Martha’s Vineyard. She went on cabin camping in September 2014, but never led a trip or was on a croo.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: Dartmouth trip leaders frequently play harmless pranks on students during trips. There are certain pranks that trip leaders classically pull such as Robert Frost’s Ashes or Canadian Ground Fruit (see corresponding entries). However, trip leaders also will sometimes pull a prank that they thought of. In this case, the informant’s trip leaders pulled this prank on the students while they were on their cabin camping trip.
  • Cultural Context: Pulling a prank on students while they are on their trip is meant to be in the spirit of fun. It has the effect of getting students to not take themselves (or in the case of common pranks such as Frost’s ashes to take the corresponding reverence for tradition) too seriously. It also serves to bond tripees on a group level as they all have a common experience of them believing or going along with something that their trip leaders told them and calls attention to their shared position of not knowing everything about Dartmouth.

Item:

  • This prank consisted of trip leaders telling students that it was a tradition to roast the jellybeans left over from the jellybean game. They had students get sticks, roasted the jellybeans, and had them eat them.

Transcript of Informant Interview:

They told us it was a Dartmouth tradition to roast jellybeans on your trips experience. So they told us to go find sticks. So we’re all searching for small sticks small enough to needle through a jellybean. Then they make us roast them. It was the most disgusting thing you’ve ever tasted. As we were looking for sticks they started laughing at us. By the end of it they told us we were so dumb.

Informant’s Comments:

  • The informant did not think this was a particularly good prank, she thought their prank was kind of dumb.

Collector’s Comments:

  • I think its interesting that when trip leaders do not pull the classic pranks such as Frost’s ashes or Canadian ground fruit, the ability for students to bond with other students who were not on their trip over their shared naivety is lost. However, the immediate effects within that specific trip group appear to be the same. This is an example of variability within the more general practice of trip leader pranks.

Collector’s Name: Clara Silvanic

Tags/Keywords:

  • DOC Trips, Trip leader pranks, jellybeans

Sunrike

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Title: Sunrike

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal folklore: speech folklore
  • Language: English
  • Country: USA

Informant Data:

  • The informant is a Dartmouth ’18 female. She is active in the Native American Community on campus, SPCSA, and Sigma Delta. She is a Government and Native American Studies modified with Anthropology double major from Martha’s Vineyard. She went on cabin camping in September 2014, but never led a trip or was on a croo.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: students are typically introduced to the concept of a sunrike when they are at the Lodge. It is offered as an optional activity where students in the same section, regardless of their trip, can wake up early and hike Moosilauke in time to watch the sunrise together at the top. Within this initial context it is offered as a sort of shared, optional self-initiation ritual where students are meant to reflect on the “sunrise of their Dartmouth careers.”
  • Cultural Context: Within the Dartmouth culture, upon student’s return to campus post-trips “sunrike” becomes a common colloquialism. When students plan to hike to see a sunrise, they tend to use sunrike to refer to their hike. This occurs in both casual groups organizing a hike and established campus organizations such a Greek houses and the outing club. Furthermore, students have been known to use the variant “sunsike” to refer to a sunset hike.

Item:

  • Sun-rike refers to a sunrise hike. In practice, sunrike’s are typically hiked in the dark so that when hikers reach the mountaintop, it is just in time to view the sunrise.

Transcript of Informant Interview:

(At the lodge) they told us we could sunrike if we wanted to. And I couldn’t believe people hiked during sunrises here. Who on earth would do that? Exercise that early in the morning? So some people did that, but we, however (the cabin camping crew), were not as inclined to do so.

Informant’s Comments:

  • The informant viewed the practice of sunriking at the lodge as another example of how “crunchy” Dartmouth trips makes new students view the school to be.

Collector’s Comments:

  • It’s interesting that the informant viewed her decision to not participate in the sunrike as somewhat related to her identity as a member of the cabin camping trip. Earlier in the interview she mentions that the cabin camping group were self-selecting students who were not as outdoorsy, but was quick to distinguish herself by mentioning that she had requested kayaking. This might speak to the efficacy of trips in quickly making students feel like they are a part of a group. However, it also makes me wonder about whether or not the trips program perpetuates hierarchical or divided social structures at Dartmouth. For example, it establishes the tiny trip in-group that belongs to the larger trip section, which is a part of that class year and so on.

Collector’s Name: Clara Silvanic

Tags/Keywords:

  • Sun-rike, Sunrike, DOC Trips, Lodge, Hiking

Contraband

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Title: Contraband

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal folklore: folk speech
  • Language: English
  • Country: USA

Informant Data:

  • The informant is a Dartmouth ’18 female. She is active in the Native American Community on campus, SPCSA, and Sigma Delta. She is a Government and Native American Studies modified with Anthropology double major from Martha’s Vineyard. She went on cabin camping in September 2014, but never led a trip or was on a croo.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: Students are first introduced to the concept of contraband–items that they are not allowed to bring–on their packing list. It is again mentioned when they check in for trips with H-croo. The informant specifically references contraband when items are collected the first night of trips in Leverone Field House (to be given back upon student’s return to campus).
  • Cultural Context: Contraband within the DOC trips culture refers to prohibited items for the purposes of safety or for liability reasons such as alcohol, or drugs. It also includes non-environmentally friendly or bug-attracting toiletries in accordance with trips “leave no trace” policy, which is another important value for the trips program and the outing club. Of course, since the purpose of trips is to allow students to get to know their trip leaders and their peer group, phones and other electronic distractions are also not allowed. Finally, personal medications are given to trip leaders to administer, placing a larger amount of responsibility on the leaders. In the larger US context, contraband refers to illegal/smuggled goods.

Item:

  • Contraband is any item taken by H-croo or trip leaders at the beginning of trips and includes alcohol, drugs, certain toiletries, cell phones and electronics, and personal medications. Contraband, unless illegal by US law, is returned to students upon their return to campus after trips.

Transcript of Informant Interview:

Sammie: you head over to Leverone and I remember they grouped us in certain areas and you pull out your sleeping bag. They search you for alcohol and take your deodorant and stuff. It’s also no drugs and no phones.

Collector: If you have meds too?

Sammie: yeah you’d give them to your trip leaders. It’s a lot of power on students to be—it’s a lot of responsibility. You go in and you think these upperclassmen know everything and now we’re the same age as them as I’m not responsible enough to handle someone’s medication. Yikes.

Informant’s Comments:

  • The informant later mentioned that on her cabin camping trip specifically, she thought is was funny that they were not allowed to have “signs of civilization” such as their phones or toiletries even though their cabin was within hearing distance and sight of the road and was also meant to have electricity.

Collector’s Comments:

  • As you can see, the informant viewed the responsibility of trip leaders to administer medication as a big responsibility. She recognizes the social mechanism of this practice in further establishing trip leader authority, beyond their superior knowledge of Dartmouth, over tripees (likely so that students will listen in case of emergency). She also considers the effects of this practice and her view of upperclassmen as a freshman to contradict how she sees herself as a senior now.
  • I also think this is an interesting example of how universal rules are applied to trips and create a common experience for students, despite differences among the “outdoorsy” rigor of various trip types.

Collector’s Name: Clara Silvanic

Tags/Keywords:

  • Contraband, DOC Trips, No phones, prohibited items

DOC Trips Naming Conventions

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Title: Trips naming conventions

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal Folklore: folk speech
  • Language: English
  • Country: USA

Informant Data:

  • The informant is a Dartmouth ’18 female. She is active in the Native American Community on campus, SPCSA, and Sigma Delta. She is a Government and Native American Studies modified with Anthropology double major from Martha’s Vineyard. She went on cabin camping in September 2014, but never led a trip or was on a croo.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context:
    • Students become introduced to their trip’s name when checking in with H-Croo upon their arrival to campus. It is how they first find their trip leaders and tripees.
  • Cultural Context:
    • Throughout trips (for example, when you meet other students on your trip section at the Lodge) and even after (especially during orientation or freshman fall) the question of what trip someone went on can be a common icebreaker. Using the DOC trips notation typically doesn’t have meaning for most people as to which specific activity someone did during their trip (ex hiking, kayaking, mountain biking, etc), but does indicate what section they were on. As trips sections are often broken up by geographic origin and whether students move into their dorm on the official move-in day, or directly after their trip, this can tell a lot about what someone’s first weeks at Dartmouth were like.

Item:

  • Every trip is named as a combination of its section (A through J), which denotes the trip start date and the number code corresponding to the trip type and location.

Transcript of Informant Interview:

Collector: If we could start with name, year, and trips section and the trip you went on.

Informant: Sammie, I’m an 18, I was on section F; cabin camping. So it’s like F-50 cabin camping.

Informant’s Comments:

  • The informant noted that a lot of section F participants were international students or from diverse parts of the US. She said that this gave a skewed sample and a more diverse impression of the Dartmouth population than what she actually found at school.

Collector’s Comments:

  • When asked what trip she went on, rather than just indicating cabin camping, she instinctually included the DOC trips specific naming convention. This suggests the inherent/subconscious significance of this aspect of trips folklore.

Collector’s Name: Clara Silvanic

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal folklore, DOC Trips, Trips Name, Trips Section